Page 5

“You don’t have to do that, big guy,” I whispered so as not to disturb the others who were slowly giving into the siren call of exhaustion, even if true sleep would forever elude them. I reached out a hand and scratched behind Goose’s ears, lavishing him with attention as I gently pushed him away.

Glowing blue eyes tipped up to me without moving his head and then narrowed. “Look, it’s not a spider bite. No venom. Not all wounds have venom in them. I’ll be fine. It’s just a bite. And I cleaned it. Now let me tie it off so it stops bleeding.”

I gave him a shove, and he stubbornly refused to stop slowly licking at the wound. More obnoxiously, he was staring me right in the face while doing it. “Yeah, okay. See, that? That’s weird and creepy, Goose. You can’t go around licking people’s legs and staring them in the eye while you do it. You’ve got to at least pretend that you aren’t being an absolute weirdo. Now leave it. Down boy. I don’t know how this game works, dude. I’ve never had a dog.”

His eyes flicked from my wound to the dripping wet cloth strip in my hand and back again a few times before he finally stopped licking the wound and stared at it.

“You’re like an old woman, Goose. Seriously. Where were you when I was getting cut up by—” I couldn’t say his name. The pain of even remembering the way he smelled, the chest-deep rumble of his pleasure as he pressed my back to him and whispered the filthiest of things while he forced me to come all over his leather-gloved hand was too much. I swallowed the name and the rest of my thoughts by snapping my mouth closed and busying myself by wrapping the wound with the strips of my sleeve.

Goose whimpered while he watched with rapt attention. The moment my hand was free of the dressing, he flopped his head in my lap and whined. I sighed softly and laid my body over his massive head. “That was unkind, wasn’t it? I’m sorry, Goose. You’re the goodest of boys. I’m the worst of mommies though. I hope you can forgive me.”

His whimpering tapered off, and his eyes closed, luxuriating in the quiet attention. I needed it just as much as he did, the simple act of holding and being held by someone who cared didn’t dull the knife at the center of my being, but it made it at least a little more tolerable to bear the burden of the agony.

Soft snores surrounded my huddled shoulders as I watched the tree line and idly pet Goose’s sleeping head.

The road ahead of us was uncertain. I had no clue what I was doing or where I was going. All I knew was that I was finally free to fuck up enough to at least find out. Nothing else really mattered. Everything could fall into place like autumn leaves. All I had to do was make sure that the three who had trusted me enough to follow me stayed safe. Keep Goose safe. Figure out what my next move was.

In the quiet hours of the night, as dawn chased us, I debated our path, following the path of warrens in my own mind. I always inevitably came to the same fork in the road: Try to find a way back to the human realm or try to find some sort of life here in this batshit wonderland of nightmares and assholes.

Chapter 3

Ard Tiarna Emrys of Breacadh an Lae, The Raven of the Dawn

“Repeat what you just said. And say it slowly.” My head was pounding. I fell into a barrel of milúll wine last night trying and failing to avoid the carved box I had found in my fury. The taste of sour fruit and my own sick coated my tongue like fur. I didn’t want to look at the evidence of my greatest sin, the giant scallop shell still sticky with the resin of Siur Dobh, the dark sister, the most addictive of the army of Fae drugs. I had put it away after the war, but only its suffocating midnight could dull the ache within me for even a few moments.

“We couldn’t find the bodies,” Silver barked from the doorway of my chambers. He’d learned ages ago not to cross that threshold, even before I had properly invested in the wards. It was no surprise that he leaned precariously on the inch and a half of woodwork deemed safe, worn nearly bald of all varnish from the countless bodies that had leaned against it in the past two hundred years.

“Then why are you here? I was clear. You look until you find them. I don’t care how long it takes.” The room spun lazily with me as its axis, and I closed my eyes against the roiling of my stomach. In the back of my mind a soft groggy whisper was waking up, luring me back to the shell. I dug the heels of my palms into my eyes and pushed as hard as I could.

It didn’t help.

“Because I don’t think she’s dead.”

I wasn’t stupid enough to let hope bloom in my mind or in my heart. Another crypt was now occupied in the sprawling burial grounds of my soul, and I was no necromancer to try digging up the dead. All I did was snort at his ridiculousness and push my naked mountain of a body from the floor.

Silver had the good sense not to remark on the state of my body. He had seen the scars riddling my skin from years of battle training. He'd been there for most of them. The scars that cut through the knotwork of opprobrium tattooed into my skin, the beheaded falcon and the shattered mountain, symbols of my court’s disgrace. The broken hammer, a symbol of my dishonor as a warrior. And in the center of it all over my liar’s heart, the bent and broken swan, a symbol of my ultimate sin, my crime against magic itself. None of them had been my choice. I had entered the War of Thorns with but a single tattoo, a spiral at the center of my back radiating with the sacred rays of Árus Láigh that I earned when I ascended to my throne as Árus Láigh’s Ard Tiarna.

Some of them Daróg himself had held me down to have branded into my skin. Some he left to the court céastúnach to execute while he watched. His cruelty had been sharpest in the years following the war, and my derangement the deepest when I sought nothing more than to soothe his ire and make the torment stop.

It hadn’t stopped with the tattoos, as demanded by ancient law.

It hadn’t stopped when they healed, and his céastúnach set to extracting my penance through more traditional means, scoring marks through the ink they had laid.

The only way it stopped was when I stopped fighting him and accepted that I deserved the retribution of the law, of the Ard Rí, and of the realm.

Water would be a good idea. Maybe it could drown the familiar siren in my head. If only I had some of the Well water I had saved for her. The water from the wells dotting Magh Meall was interconnected with the Well of Magic that we were said to have been born from. It ran crystal clear and icy at all times of the year, no matter the temperature outside. In winter, it never froze. In summer, it never warmed. Cricket had loved the way it slid down her delicate throat and wet her voice to scream at or for me.

“Captain. I’m serious.”

“Go away, Silver. I have no room in my schedule for cruel tricks today. Leave me to my melancholy for at least a full turn. I beseech you.” I held my head in my hand, palming it to try and stave off the whirl of the world around me.

“Captain. I said that we hadn’t found their bodies—”

“I heard you the first time, Silvertree. There is no reason nor call to repeat your ineptitude unless you are courting a dismissal,” I snapped, the volume of my own voice driving spears through my head, and I groaned, catching myself on the shattered bones of a bookshelf.

“Senán’s claws! Will you listen to what I’m saying, Captain! We didn’t find their bodies, but we found blood.”

The world careened to a halt as my eyes whipped open and focused on the scuff in the grey-blue stonework where I had shattered the standing mirror she refused to look into. “Go on.”